THE sight of the Prince, the Princess of Wales, or Windsors, or whatever latest jive they go by, getting out of chauffeur-driven cars to visit a food bank in England was surely enough for anyone with a lonely brain cell. We have got so used to performative public figures in these immoral times that really anything goes, but surely this was a new low of Marie Antoinette depths.
Food banks are a disgrace and indicative of moral debasement in any society. Wages and benefits should provide human dignity and forcing local community handouts to prevent children dying of hunger is outrageous. The normalisation of food banks over the past ten years is a source of shame and most certainly should not be a photo op for millionaires who do not do a hand's turn other than fight with their siblings for public sympathy and commitment to their perpetuation.
But British monarchic inheritees are far from the only ones engaged in such performance. Oh, no!
Matt Hancock MP. Little else needs to be added as his name is now so lip-curlingly vomit-inducing. £330k for a telly performance, while drawing his MP salary, giving £10k to two charities and pocketing the rest. The guillotine was invented amidst the rage-inducing feelings this should create.
Hot on his heels, PM Rishi Sunak, the man no-one elected but we all still got, stands telling us that we can have “virtual beds” in a “reformed” Health Service, while standing in front of a visual display which read “Stop the boats." Nothing like a healthy dose of racist international law-breaking to accompany your intelligence being insulted, all while granny consigns herself to an old age of poverty and crippling ill-health. But ho, hum, the performance was there – the speech all done in front of student nurses in their uniforms in Stockton-on-Tees waiting for their visa applications for Dubai coming through.
The happy thing for all of these performers is that centuries of class warfare has ensured that they can insult and parade and tax-evade with full confidence that there will be deference and polite handshaking. Money and privilege still stand supreme and those with it still live insulated from the harms that copperfasten it.
As an Irish woman living in my own country I would love to be observing this self-induced catastrophe in Britain as an interested friend. Instead I sit here with the Windsors proclaiming their kingship/princeship/whatevership over me and my family. And your man Hancock makes up the Tory Party crazy majority which is doing its level best to destroy all faith in political standards or accountability. And Rishi Sunak heads up the slash and burn administration that exists only to keep itself in position. And despite no-one here voting for any of them, we are tied to them.
We have been dragged out of the EU against our will. We live with Westminster psychopaths tearing up all international human rights laws and norms. And as for bilateral obligations under the Good Friday Agreement or being a co-guarantor? Only if it comes with the promise of US dollars, sir!
It's time we, the people who live on this island, were given a choice. Are we happy with this? Or after 854 years, is enough enough?
